Nanoelectronics key to advances in renewable energy

February 16, 2014

Nanoscale technology looks promising as a major contributor to advancements needed to fulfill the potential of emerging sources of clean, renewable energy.

Progress in the comparatively new area of nanoelectronics in particular could be the basis for new manufacturing processes and devices to make renewable energy systems and technologies more efficient and cost-effective.

Stephen Goodnick will focus on what nanoelectronics advances could do to help push the performance of solar energy systems to the next level in his talk at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Feb. 13-17 in Chicago.

His presentation will lead off a session on Feb. 16, titled "Nanoelectronics for Renewable Energy: How Nanoscale Innovations Address Global Needs."

Goodnick is a professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, one of Arizona State University's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Titled "Pathways to Next-Generation Photovoltaics," Goodnick's presentation will look at how innovations driven by nanoelectronics research can enable photovoltaic technology to significantly improve our ability to convert sunlight and heat into electric power.

He'll specifically delve into how new types of nanostructure-based devices can make it possible to produce photovoltaic solar cells that achieve better energy-conversion efficiency.

Goodnick explains that the key is in the different characteristics, properties and behavior of materials at the nanoscale.

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter (one meter is a little more the 39 inches long). About 100,000 nanometers amount to the same thickness as a typical sheet of paper.

At that tiny scale, silicon and other materials that are used to make solar cells can perform in ways that boost the effectiveness of devices for producing energy, Goodnick says.

"With the use of nanoparticles, made into nanostructures, we could, for instance, improve optical collection, enabling systems to trap more light for conversion into electrical power," he says.

"Using nanomaterials, we could make solar cells even thinner but still more efficient, and we could increase the capacity of energy-storage devices," he says.

Such progress will hinge on the success of science and engineering research in overcoming current high production costs and some technical challenges. But Goodnick says he's confident nanotechnology advances "are going to be big factors in the future of energy."

Goodnick's talk is part of an AAAS conference session that will also feature additional presentations on aspects of nanoelectronics and renewable energy by four other scientists and engineers who will join Goodnick in a research collaboration beginning in July at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University Munich in Germany.

Goodnick has been awarded the German university's Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship, which will enable him to spend six months conducting research at the institute this year. The fellowship award is given to engineers and scientists doing innovative work in areas of interest to the institute.

Related Stories

Arizona State University has established a partnership with the University of Tokyo, Japan, aimed at strengthening research and educational endeavors at both institutions to advance solar energy technology.

Arizona has more sunny days per year than any other state in the U.S. Phoenix residents enjoy more than 300 sun-filled days per year, according to the citys official website. Given this seemingly endless supply of sunlight, ...

Professor Ravi Silva of the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute has identified the range of combinations of organic and inorganic materials that will underpin new 4th generation solar cell technology – ...

By replacing platinum with molybdenum in photoelectrochemical cells, scientists from two EPFL labs have developed a cheaper and scalable technique that can greatly improve hydrogen production through water splitting as a ...

Parabolic troughs and dry-cooled towers deliver similar value for concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, despite different solar profiles, a new report by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has ...

Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues recently developed detailed plans to transform the energy infrastructure of New York, California and Washington states from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable resources ...

Recommended for you

Scientists have been making nanoparticles for more than two decades in two-dimensional sheets, three-dimensional crystals and random clusters. But they have never been able to get a sheet of nanoparticles to curve or fold ...

Serendipity has as much a place in science as in love. That's what Northeastern physicists Swastik Kar and Srinivas Sridhar found during their four-year project to modify graphene, a stronger-than-steel infinitesimally thin ...

Graphene has been called a wonder material, capable of performing great and unusual material acrobatics. Boron nitride nanotubes are no slackers in the materials realm either, and can be engineered for physical and biological ...

(Phys.org)—Currently, all light-emitting diodes (LEDs) emit light of only one color, which is predefined during fabrication. So far, tuning the color of light produced by a single LED has never been realized, despite numerous ...

When it comes to installing solar cells, labor cost and the cost of the land to house them constitute the bulk of the expense. The solar cells—made often of silicon or cadmium telluride—rarely cost more than 20 percent ...

A team of researchers from Berkeley Lab and Columbia University has passed a major milestone in molecular electronics with the creation of the world's highest-performance single-molecule diode. Working at Berkeley Lab's Molecular ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.